Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D: On the fringes of the MCU [Endgame spoilers pg. 19]

[The BlackBear]

Oh I love it so much! Fitz is a really good bad guy. The world is nicely set up, they're obviously doing a bit of a Man in the High Castle thing, but there's a real feel of House of M for me. Ward being a double agent the other way, such fun! Waiting to see where Radcliffe is, will we meet Fitz's dad? I'm guessing his greatest regret is to do with him, and now he's close enough to quote him. There's a nice undercurrent of struggle making you a stronger person, (something the 100 more awkwardly did as theirs was tied in to chronic pain, rather than formative experience.)

And Bill Paxton got an in memory of. Good call show, good call.

[Annara Snow]

On 4/6/2017 at 3:00 AM, The BlackBear said:

Oh I love it so much! Fitz is a really good bad guy. The world is nicely set up, they're obviously doing a bit of a Man in the High Castle thing, but there's a real feel of House of M for me. Ward being a double agent the other way, such fun! Waiting to see where Radcliffe is, will we meet Fitz's dad? I'm guessing his greatest regret is to do with him, and now he's close enough to quote him. There's a nice undercurrent of struggle making you a stronger person, (something the 100 more awkwardly did as theirs was tied in to chronic pain, rather than formative experience.)

And Bill Paxton got an in memory of. Good call show, good call.

I'm really unhappy with the fact that most of the twists from this episode were spoiled for me - by the people behind the show itself. They spoiled Fitz being 'the doctor" and Whitehall-level evil in a promo poster and one of the character teasers, they spoiled another thing that we'll learn in episode 4.17 in another promo poster, they spoiled Madame Hydra in that EW article, and the Ward twist was spoiled on social media because they screened the episode at Wondercon a few days before it aired, and there was a bunch of reports and interviews from there where the cast and crew were spoiling a bunch of things. I didn't even know they were at Wondercon or that there was any screening, and learned about it by opening my Twitter and seeing a tweet from the goddamn Nerdalicious blog about what Brett Dalton said about FW Ward at the panel after the episode was screened. I don't understand why they were so willing to spoil so many things in advance.

Anyway, after seeing the cast and crew interviews on YT, I'm really happy that they are explicitly saying that the Framework experience will affect everyone and have huge emotional consequences. I don't know how it could not, if they remember it, but it's good to know that they are committed to it and that it won't just ignored as 'oh well, it was not real so it doesn't matter'. 

"Struggle making you a stronger person", I don't think it is that simple. Sure it can make you stronger (Coulson) but a lot of people break due to it, and pain and struggle can also make you a much worse person. May's life in the Framework did not work out happy as Radcliffe and Aida planned - they fixed her biggest regret (killing an Inhuman child) and now in the FW it's an even bigger regret and a source of even more pain and guilt for her, since she saved the girl and that resulted in deaths of so many people. And now she's even angrier and darker than ever in real life and just wants to fix her mistake by destroying all Inhumans and fix her mistake.

Oh and BTW, shameless self-praise:  I totally called the Bahrain thing over a month ago, after 4.15 aired - and even after episode 4.11 I was going "hmmm, that's not a happy ending, the little girl was dangerous and deranged". I figured Katya went on to do something disastrous that was at least part of the reason why the world feared Inhumans so much, and May now carries the guilt of that and is working for Hydra because she thinks that's the right thing to do. I was wrong in some of my speculations, but some, like this one, was spot on. I'm pretty sure I was the only one that guessed that, everyone else was focused only on how Coulson being a civilian affected the world.

Fitz actually quoted his dad, which suggests they had a close relationship in this reality and he looked up to him. It's good to know that Daisy is wrong when he tells Jemma it's all about taking her from his life, and that it's not just "the love of a good woman" (or love for a bad one) that's responsible for him turning out that way. Fitz said: "My father always said you need to trust to be betrayed". Earlier in the season, during the LMD arc, they talked about Fitz' experiences of being betrayed by people he trusted, at the same time as they talked about his father's abandonment of him. It's now obvious they were setting this. It's been speculated a lot that Fitz' regret was about his father and that the FW gave him a close relationship with him. It sounds like the dad was a bad influence and made Fitz colder, less open, unwilling to trust people or see good in them. If you don't give people trust, you can't be betrayed. It reminds me of Garrett's advice to Ward - "Don't get ever attached to anything or anyone, you have to fight that weakness inside of you".

The twist with Ward makes perfect sense. I find it a bit funny that people are now like "oh but he's a good guy and totally different from the real  Ward", when he's actually exactly the same as the real Ward, or at least Ward from late season 1 (maybe not so much Ward from later seasons when he got increasingly unhinged), only happier since he's been in a long-term relationship with 'Skye'. The only difference are the circumstances and his choice of allegiance as a result of that.  In the real world, he was a Hydra mole inside SHIELD just because of loyalty to his father figure, Garrett, and did everything he did in S1 to save Garrett's life and fulfill the mission he got from him. In the FW, his past is probably the same, but Garrett is presumably dead (because Coulson was never resurrected, and Garrett never found the formula to keep himself alive) and Ward's only real attachment is to 'Skye', and he decided to become a Resistance mole inside Hydra because this version of Hydra is violently anti-Inhuman*, and he found out his girlfriend was an Inhuman.

It seems like a lot of people tend to forget that Ward never cared about Hydra, he was always driven by personal loyalty. He was always attaching himself to someone and making them the driving motive for all the things he did (ironic considering Garrett's advice, but it's also ironic that Garrett was actually using that to keep him from getting attached to other people, while making him completely emotionally dependent on himself). When Garrett died, he fixated first on Skye, then on Kara, and then her death sent him even more over the edge and he didn't have anything to give himself as his new 'mission' except 'revenge'.

Oh, and I love that he wore the same black leather jacket as in season 1 post-reveal. (Mmm. Ward in the black leather jacket  )

Right now the only thing I'm really unsure about is Madame Hydra. Is she an avatar directly controlled by Aida? Aida can't plug in her consciousness into the Framework, but maybe she has created an avatar and programmed it for the purpose of protecting the FW from the inside? Technically she could be Agnes, but I get the impression she knows she is in the Framework - and this is why Daisy and Jemma are dangerous, she tries to pass it to Fitz as a fear of 'subversives' trying to destroy Hydra, but if she's an avatar of or programmed by Aida, she is not actually concerned about the Resistance, she is only concerned with people trying to destroy the Framework. And, well, it really wouldn't be surprising if Aida took the opportunity to use her self-insert to hook up with Fitz in this AU reality.  

*Man, the show can never keep Hydra's ideology, goals and origins consistent from season to season. At least they gave this Hydra a green logo to differentiate them from real world Hydra and their red logo. They always have 'world domination' and authoritarianism as a goal, but first you have Red Skull - supposedly their founder - who's obsessed with becoming superpowered and researches alien artefacts, you have Whitehall etc. trying to use powered people and Inhumans to get more power, you have Pierce etc. who just want authoritarianism, then it turns out Hydra was founded as a cult worshipping the most powerful of Inhumans and trying to get him to Earth... and how this Hydra is all about hating Inhumans? I assume that the official version of their history, which now acknowledges Hydra is thousands years old, conveniently fails to mention for what purpose they were founded. But really, Hydra is whatever evil thing writers want to focus on in any given season, and "Hydra" seems less like one organization, and more like a label used to convey "evil organization!"

As to your questions about characters appearing... Have you seen the promo for the next episode? There's also some interesting casting info for episode 18. Under the cut:

Spoiler

 

Radcliffe and Mace appear in episode 17(and Mace's role was already spoiled in one of the promo posters) and we'll see Mack too. 

Scottish actor David O'Hara (who, BTW, has been my fancast for Randyll Tarly for ages) is credited as playing "Alistair". There's no way that's not Fitz' dad.

http://fyeahdecaestecker.tumblr.com/image/159164862854

 

 

 

 

[SerPaladin]

19 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

*Man, the show can never keep Hydra's ideology, goals and origins consistent from season to season. At least they gave this Hydra a green logo to differentiate them from real world Hydra and their red logo. They always have 'world domination' and authoritarianism as a goal, but first you have Red Skull - supposedly their founder - who's obsessed with becoming superpowered and researches alien artefacts, you have Whitehall etc. trying to use powered people and Inhumans to get more power, you have Pierce etc. who just want authoritarianism, then it turns out Hydra was founded as a cult worshipping the most powerful of Inhumans and trying to get him to Earth... and how this Hydra is all about hating Inhumans? I assume that the official version of their history, which now acknowledges Hydra is thousands years old, conveniently fails to mention for what purpose they were founded. But really, Hydra is whatever evil thing writers want to focus on in any given season, and "Hydra" seems less like one organization, and more like a label used to convey "evil organization!"

The show suffers from blending AIM and Hydra into one mix.

The Cosmic Cube was AIM in the comics, and they were the "world conquest through science" guys. To make the first Cap movie simpler, Hydra is the science group, the cosmic cube is the tesseract, and Skull is in charge. Hydra was the terrorists, but the "worshiping the ancient Inhuman" story has some roots in the comics, just without the inhuman part.

For the MCU, they are, as the kid says, the Nazi's science (and spy) division. Skull is leveraging the tesseract, Whitehall is chasing other 084s that might hold power, Zola is engineering the Hydra infiltration over decades, Strucker is weaponizing Loki's spear and the Chitauri tech. Ward & Garrett are old school hydra, double agents in an org chart that goes all the way to Pierce. Even in Ant Man, they are trying to buy tech to enable their world-conquest, through science.

AIM was always more fun to me, mad science for the sake of mad science. Radcliffe feels like he'd be right at home in AIM, but not at all in Hydra.

[The BlackBear]

I went into it more or less fresh, all I knew was Madame Hydra would be in it and that Ward would return and I also know:

Spoiler

Tripp is back due to his stunt double IMDB stuff.

I'm going to avoid spoilers and promo's as they do seem to give away a lot.

[Annara Snow]

Jed Whedon's interview for EW explains some of the stuff regarding Madame Hydra and how Jemma was able to wake up in a dead body:

http://ew.com/tv/2017/04/04/agents-sheild-framework-hydra-spoilers/

He seems to be confirming that Madame Hydra is an Aida self-insert and that she's not just trying to protect the Framework, but also to experience human emotions. Makes sense - her avatar is the most powerful person in the world and Fitz is her lover and adores her... indeed that sounds just like a wish fulfillment self-insert. 

[PetyrPunkinhead]

On 4/7/2017 at 10:31 AM, Annara Snow said:

Jed Whedon's interview for EW explains some of the stuff regarding Madame Hydra and how Jemma was able to wake up in a dead body:

http://ew.com/tv/2017/04/04/agents-sheild-framework-hydra-spoilers/

He seems to be confirming that Madame Hydra is an Aida self-insert and that she's not just trying to protect the Framework, but also to experience human emotions. Makes sense - her avatar is the most powerful person in the world and Fitz is her lover and adores her... indeed that sounds just like a wish fulfillment self-insert. 

Great interview! Thanks for the link. I agree, it seems like Madame Hydra is Aida and not Agnes. I'm pretty sure we'll find Radcliff and Agnes living happily together in some picturesque cottage in the Matrix  framework untouched by Hydra. Then he'll have to be convinced Aida has run amuck and help them figure out a way to get the SHIELD crew out of the Matrix framework. 

On 4/7/2017 at 10:06 AM, SerPaladin said:

The show suffers from blending AIM and Hydra into one mix...

...AIM was always more fun to me, mad science for the sake of mad science. Radcliffe feels like he'd be right at home in AIM, but not at all in Hydra.

Wasn't AIM part of S1 & S2 of Agents of SHIELD? For some reason I associate Deathlok in the show with AIM. But then AIM turned out to be a front for HYDRA in the show, right? I don't have as much attachment to AIM from my comic book reading days in the 90s. They were used pretty interchangeably with Hydra and the Hand--big bad guy/gal with many minions dressed in identical uniforms for the her to beat up, rinse and repeat.

On 4/5/2017 at 8:00 PM, The BlackBear said:

Oh I love it so much! Fitz is a really good bad guy. The world is nicely set up, they're obviously doing a bit of a Man in the High Castle thing, but there's a real feel of House of M for me. Ward being a double agent the other way, such fun! Waiting to see where Radcliffe is, will we meet Fitz's dad?...

...And Bill Paxton got an in memory of. Good call show, good call.

Agreed! Ward turning out to be a "good guy" in this virtual world was brilliant! I'm a sucker for alternate reality/elseworld/what if? type stories anyway, so it definitely looks like the final episodes of this season will be some really  entertaining ones.

RIP Billy Pax.

[The BlackBear]

1 hour ago, PetyrPunkinhead said:

Wasn't AIM part of S1 & S2 of Agents of SHIELD? For some reason I associate Deathlok in the show with AIM. But then AIM turned out to be a front for HYDRA in the show, right? I don't have as much attachment to AIM from my comic book reading days in the 90s. They were used pretty interchangeably with Hydra and the Hand--big bad guy/gal with many minions dressed in identical uniforms for the her to beat up, rinse and repeat.

AIM were Killian's group in IM3, the Deathlok programme was all HYDRA, but it did use Extremis as a constituent part of the centipede formula.

AIM are at their best is when they're making MODOK and other crazy but very dangerous things. They're uniform's brilliant as well, spandex bee keepers.

[PetyrPunkinhead]

On 4/8/2017 at 6:03 PM, The BlackBear said:

AIM were Killian's group in IM3, the Deathlok programme was all HYDRA, but it did use Extremis as a constituent part of the centipede formula.

AIM are at their best is when they're making MODOK and other crazy but very dangerous things. They're uniform's brilliant as well, spandex bee keepers.

Ah, I remember now. It was the Extremis that helped control his centipede induced rage or something, right? I really need to go back and re-watch IM3. (I only saw it once in the theater. #fanboyshame)

Yeah, MODOK and beekeperesque minions are what I remember most about AIM form the comics. It wouldn't kill 'em to put a couple of AIM guys in an MCU film or show somewhere in those outfits. 

[The BlackBear]

Centipede was a mixture of gamma radiation stuff, an attempt at a super soldier formula, and Extremis. The Extermis element was the reason they were exploding. Do you remember the Chinese pyro magician fellow who went crazy and called himself Scorch? They used his blood to solve the explosive issues.

[PetyrPunkinhead]

Yeah, that's right. It's all coming back to me now. Since we're on Extremis, I wonder if that will come back in in Spider-Man Homecoming since Tony Stark seems to be playing a decent-sized role in that plot. I've got a feeling Iron Spider could show up at the end of the film, maybe as a coda/post-credit scene. That Iron Spider suit could be Extremis related, or also Extremis could get into the hands of a villain and create Scorpion or Rhino even...maybe, unlikely, but maybe.

[Jaxom 1974]

The episode was solid. Very solid.  Sadly, it's not going to have time to breathe and really become something though. 

[Annara Snow]

20 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

The episode was solid. Very solid.  Sadly, it's not going to have time to breathe and really become something though. 

What do you mean by that?

[Jaxom 1974]

1 hour ago, Annara Snow said:

What do you mean by that?

This is the kind of story that could benefit from 12 or even 18 episodes, if in the right hands, rather than the 6 or so they'll have.  That's all.

[Annara Snow]

11 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

This is the kind of story that could benefit from 12 or even 18 episodes, if in the right hands, rather than the 6 or so they'll have.  That's all.

Seven episodes seems to be standard for a big closing arc of a season on AoS. The Hydra takeover in season 1 was an arc that lasted 7 episodes (16-22), though that was of course conditioned by the release date of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Hive/'Fallen Agent' arc in season 3 was episodes 15-22. A lot can happen over the course of 6-7 episodes. It's at least three times the length of a movie, after all.

And it looks like tonight's episode and probably the following few episodes will fully take place in the Framework, just like episode 16, and then the finale (one or two episodes) will probably have action in the real world combined with the Framework as they fight the Superior dude and Aida and try to get everyone out and decide what to do with the Framework. Just my speculation, I don't know how exactly they will do it (and I've stopped reading the press releases for episodes after the one for episode 17, to avoid potential spoilers).

[mcbigski]

"Make our society great again."  Brilliant commentary.  And so deftly woven in. 

[Corvinus85]

16 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

This is the kind of story that could benefit from 12 or even 18 episodes, if in the right hands, rather than the 6 or so they'll have.  That's all.

I would not have been able to stand an 18 episode arc in the alternate reality. I like that these arcs are constrained to about 7-8 apiece. I think AoS may have found the right formula to have long seasons with long narratives. I think this season has been the best so far.

[Jaxom 1974]

6 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I would not have been able to stand an 18 episode arc in the alternate reality. I like that these arcs are constrained to about 7-8 apiece. I think AoS may have found the right formula to have long seasons with long narratives. I think this season has been the best so far.

I'll concede 12 may be a bit much, but I think 12 would be better.  Last night's little twist with Fits I think would have been more impactful if there'd been a little more build up to maybe he's not actually evil, that maybe he remembers...really though, an episode or two to build the Framework a bit more would have been nice.

[Dr. Pepper]

1 hour ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I'll concede 12 may be a bit much, but I think 12 would be better.  Last night's little twist with Fits I think would have been more impactful if there'd been a little more build up to maybe he's not actually evil, that maybe he remembers...really though, an episode or two to build the Framework a bit more would have been nice.

I think I missed the twist.  It seemed a straight up evil Fitz all the way through.

[felice]

47 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I think I missed the twist.  It seemed a straight up evil Fitz all the way through.

He's been put in the role of an unambiguously evil figure, yes, but there was an expectation that he's still the same person on the inside, even if he doesn't remember his real life. Most of the evil he's done is implanted fake memories, not real, and Aida was afraid to let him see the picture of Simmons. I thought the twist was quite impactful enough as it is, without needing more buildup. It's likely to have ramifications for his relationships in the real world.

[Jaxom 1974]

Likely?

I'm wondering if Fitz survives into another season now...